DAILY MARKET REPORT – 16/02/2023
An upwards move across the board yesterday as the end of winter became that little bit further away.
A move once again in temperature forecasts to show an earlier cold spell to be expected next week, rather than in March, will have helped push up prices in yesterdays session.
Gas stocks remain very close to their five year high for this time of year and LNG flows towards Europe remain healthy, particularly with lots of reported activity at Freeport LNG.
Alongside other major UK energy companies Shell and bp, this morning Centrica reports record annual profits of £2.8bn. No doubt this headline will be jumped on this morning as they have had recent media coverage over forced prepayment meter installations in their domestic supply business. However, whilst the detail remains unpublished at the time of this post, it is likely their upstream business would have generated much of this profit (as in previous years) due to the huge price volatility and the nature in which upstream gas is sold to the market.
Yesterday saw the TTF March contract settle at €54.72 (from €52.39) and the NBP March contract at 137.25p (from 129.59p).
Aasta Hansteen back on unplanned outage this morning and we see a flow level at 327mcm from Norway (332). Russian nominations showing Velke Kapusany at 30.1mcm (30.1) and Sudzha at 35.8mcm (35.8). Nord Stream remains unavailable. Gas storage showing at 65.22% full as per AGSI+. LNG vessels due to arrive in UK next couple of weeks is 11.
This morning we see the March TTF contract at €54, DOWN €1 to the previous settlement.
A quick check on some key contracts:
Curve TTF March €54, Summer €55 (vs €55 and €53)
Curve NBP March 137p, Summer 138p (vs 130p and 132p)
UK Gas NBP spot 138p (from 133p).
UK Power DA £141 (from £134).
UK power prices show the UK March Baseload contract at £143 (£139) and Summer at £146 (£140).
In other areas of the market Brent Oil is at $85 ($86) and EUAs are at €94 (€92). Henry Hub is at $2.47 ($2.57) and JKM is at $15.61 ($17.89) with TTF Equiv of $17.14 ($16.46).
Numbers in brackets show the previous reports value.